The Air Trust eBook

Then, lost and beyond all guidance, it somersaulted,
slid away down a long drop and, whirling wildly over
and over, plunged with Gabriel into the glowing, smoking,
detonating void!

CHAPTER XXXV.

TERROR AND RETREAT.

When, despite Flint’s imperative orders, Slade
failed to reopen the lines of communication for him,
before nightfall, and when President Supple wired
in code for a little more time in obeying Air Trust
orders, the Billionaire recognized that something
of terrible menace now had suddenly broken in upon
his dream of universal power.

He summoned Waldron and Herzog for another conference
and together they feverishly planned to put the works
under defense, until such time as troops could be
got through to them.

The plant regiment was mustered and the Cosmos mercenaries
and scabs were made ready. The machine-guns were
unlimbered for action and large quantities of ammunition
were delivered to them and to the aerial-bomb guns,
as nightfall lowered. Herzog set eight hundred
men to work covering all the tanks possible, with
wire netting of heavy steel. The search-lights
were all ordered into use; steam and electrical connections
were made, the air-fleet was manned, and everything
was done that unlimited wealth and bitter hate of
the Workers could suggest.

With curses on the fog, which hid the upper air from
view, the old man now stood at one of the west windows
of his inner office—­the office on the top
floor of the main Administration Building, overlooking
nearly the whole Plant.

“Damn the weather!” he snarled, his gold
teeth glinting. “In addition to all this
mist from the Falls, there’s a regular cloud-bank
settling down, tonight! Under cover of it, what
may not happen? Nothing could have been worse,
Waldron. Though we shall soon control the air,
that won’t be enough, so long as fogs and mists
escape us. Our next problem—­hello!
Now what the devil’s that?”

“What’s what?” retorted Waldron,
testily. He had been drinking rather more heavily
than usual, that day, both because of the dull weather
and because the Falls invariably got on his nerves,
during his brief sojourns there. Away from New
York and his favorite haunts, Waldron was lost.
“What’s what?” he repeated with an
ugly look. “This roaring, glaring, trembling
place gives me—­”

“That! That light in the sky!” cried
Flint, excitedly pointing. “See? No—­it’s
gone now! But it looked like—­like a
rocket! A signal, of some kind, thrown from an
aeroplane! A—­”

Waldron laughed harshly.

“Seeing things, eh?” he sneered, coming
across to the window, himself, and peering out. “I
don’t see anything! Nothing here to worry
about, Flint. With all these walls and guns,
and netting, and air-ships and a private army and
all, what more do you want? Not getting nervous
in your old age, are you, eh?” he gibed bitterly.
“Or is your conscience beginning to wake up,
as the graveyard becomes more a probability than—­”